Early Life
Styrene was born in 1957 in Bromley, Kent, and raised in Brixton, London. Her mother, who raised her alone, was a Scottish-Irish legal secretary. Her father was a dispossessed Somali aristocrat.
As a teenager, Styrene was a "barefoot hippie". At age 15, she ran away from home with £3 in her pocket, and hitchhiked from one music festival to another, staying at hippie crash pads. She thought of this as a challenge to survive. The adventure ended when she stepped on a rusty nail while bathing in a stream and had to be treated for septicaemia.
After seeing the Sex Pistols performance at the Pier Pavillion Hastings on 3 July 1976 (her 19th birthday) she thought that anyone could do what they were doing and so decided to form the punk band X-Ray Spex. She eventually became a passionate feminist and posted a blog dedicated to women's rights and defence of women.
Read more about this topic: Poly Styrene
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.
He knew that he heard it,
A bird’s cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Every time an ashtray is missing from a hotel, they don’t come looking for you. But let a diamond bracelet disappear in France and they shout John Robie, the Cat. You don’t have to spend every day of your life proving your honesty, but I do.”
—John Michael Hayes (b.1919)